Diary of to Amos A. Lawrence: January 21, 1859

Evening to James Lawrence's. Meeting of forty gentlemen about a building for Agassiz collection. Mr. Gray has given $50,000 for increasing and supporting the collection already made. Ex-Governor Clifford in the chair. Those who made remarks were Dr. Walker, Governor Banks, ex-Governor Washburn, E. R. Hoar, Mr. George Ticknor, Dr. Gould, Dr. Jacob Bigelow, and myself. But Agassiz made the speech of the evening, very modest and characteristic; all for the science, nothing for himself. Dr. Bigelow introduced a vote and called the collection the “Agassiz Museum,” etc., but Agassiz interrupted him and declined decidedly. “Personalities,” said he, “must be banished from science.”

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 159-60

Diary of to Amos A. Lawrence: November 17, 1858

President Walker, Chief Justice Shaw, Judge G. T. Bigelow, Rev. Dr. Putnam, Professors Agassiz and Longfellow, Messrs. David Sears, W. Appleton, E. Rockwood Hoar, Jared Sparks, and J. A. Lowell dined here at four o'clock. They had an agreeable meeting. Chief Justice Shaw took Mrs. Lawrence in to dinner, though I asked Dr. Walker to do so; the former (who is seventy-eight) being more active than Dr. Walker, who is lame. The dinner was cooked by our own cook, Marion, and they all were cheerful and even gay; nor did they leave the dining-room until they went away. Mr. Agassiz sat next to me and talked all the time. I asked him whether some anecdotes about him in the newspapers to-day were true, but he had not seen them. Then I repeated one about his replying to a person who offered him a large sum for some lectures, “that he was too busy to waste his time in making money;” and this he pronounced to be true.

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 158-9

Judge Ebenezer R. Hoar to Governor John A. Andrew, May 1861

Saturday afternoon.

My Dear Fellow: I came to seize you and take you down to dine at our club — where we expect Motley — for your soul's salvation or body's, at least. Send that foolish Council away till Monday. A man who has no respect for Saturday afternoon, has but one step to take, to join in abolishing the 4th of July. “The Court, having considered your case, do adjudge,” that you come — if you can't come now, come down half an hour hence — to Parker's.

Yours,

E. R. Hoar.

SOURCE: Henry Greenleaf Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew: Governor of Massachusetts, 1861-1865, Volume 1, p. 261